Friendship – A Cherokee County man is dead and four officers have been placed on administrative leave following a weekend shootout that lasted the better part of an hour.
Joe Radford was shot and killed Saturday night after an incident that began with him firing shots into a neighbor’s home on Radford Road, according to Chris Wood, chief deputy of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Derrick Palmer said Radford fled into the darkness after firing at the home, and later shot at deputies who responded to a 911 call. Radford was shot and killed nearly an hour later, after he emerged from the darkness with a rifle and “aimed the weapon at the officers while making threats to shoot them,” according to Palmer.
Radford died at the scene, while no officers or other individuals were injured in the incident.
“The suspect actually discharged the firearm several times at the officers,” Palmer said. “He’s in the darkness in the area, (with officers) not knowing where the shots are coming from or where he’s at.
“You can imagine, they called everybody in the county with a badge and a gun that way ... and while we were in the area, the suspect came out of the darkness threatening law enforcement and brandished a firearm. Then the officers had to do what they had to do.”
Radford is listed as 56 years old and has a last known address of 1370 Radford Road, according to multiple online people finder resources. Palmer said authorities do not have a motive as to why he
shot at a neighboring home and deputies, but said his agency has “a history with this particular subject on similar incidents in the past.”
Wood confirmed it is standard practice for the sheriff’s office to place officers on paid leave following an officer-involved shooting and to contact the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation to look into it.
“No one knew what was happening or what was going on, or why he was acting the way he was,” Palmer said.
“All of that is part of the SBI investigation, to get that information and to find out what led up to it and those kinds of things.”
Wood said a 911 call was placed about 8:13 p.m. by neighbors, who were in their residence at the time when Radford shot into the home. Radford began firing at deputies about 8:49 p.m., then was shot and killed nearly an hour later, Wood estimated.
“I would say, from the first shot he fired in the presence of our deputies, until the actual officer-involved shooting occurred was between 45 minutes and an hour,” he said.
Palmer said multiple law enforcement agencies responded after Radford began firing at officers.
“I can tell you that we had representation from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, Murphy Police Department, N.C. Wildlife (Resources Commission), U.S. Forest Service – just about anybody you can imagine was there,” Palmer said. “We’re just so thankful that none of the officers were injured. My biggest fear for the night was that we’d have officers ambushed out of the darkness ... and luckily that didn’t happen.”
Palmer said he believed Radford had multiple weapons. Officers set up a “rough containment perimeter” and had a general idea of where he was firing from.
“You can kind of narrow it down to a certain direction, and do the best you can on perimeters and try to contain the person inside that perimeter,” Palmer said. “But, again, you’re talking about a big area that officers may not be familiar with, as far as the wooded area part, and a lot of time suspects are familiar with those.
“It’s a rural area, of course. We had discussed early on about doing a reverse 911 call, but we do know that officers went door to door after they got on scene to let neighbors know what the situation was and what was going on, so we were confident that people in the immediate surroundings were notified of what was happening.”
Wood said SBI investigations can often range from as little as three months to as much as 18 months, depending on the circumstances of a shooting. The amount of time officers have to remain on administrative leave can also vary from case to case.
“At this point, we have a lot of things we’re concerned about, and the first thing is the welfare of our officers who were involved,” Wood said. “The administrative leave serves a lot of purposes, one of which is to make sure that our officers are in a good place, mentally, from being involved in such a horrific situation. It also gives us time for fact finding.”
In the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, four officers make up about 10 percent of the staff. Wood said the remainder of officers would take up the slack while those officers are on leave, along with increased assistance from other agencies, such as the Murphy and Andrews police departments.
“Our relationships with those departments help pick up the load,” Wood said. “It’s a group effort, but we will not see any decline in our services provided to the citizens.”
Palmer said he expects his agency to release more details about the incident later in the week.
“We’re having to go through the District Attorney’s Office and SBI, coordinate things with them, before we can say too much,” he said.